Inflation is the key economic threat to the outlook

The consumer goods outlook is facing a threat that is just as important as e-commerce—and that is much more than an Amazon effect.

Rising price inflation will be a double-edged threat to the consumer goods outlook through 2025. The two sides to this inflation impact are evident in:

Services (mostly). Rising consumer price pressure will be concentrated almost entirely outside of goods categories—primarily in services categories, but also in food and energy.

Goods. Flat or falling prices will persist (despite trade war effects) in most goods categories—except in food and energy. This will reflect ongoing competitive pressures faced by retail goods channels—including an “Amazon effect.”

As a result, goods categories will feel a sharper negative impact to sales gains through 2025 as they lose out to categories that are harder to constrain—namely, services, food, and energy.

The implications, however, are most important at a category-specific level. That’s because these negative price-related impacts on consumer goods will:

Vary greatly by category—in terms of the extent of both weak pricing and weak unit volume response to pricing.

Add to an e-commerce impact that also varies greatly by category.

Category and channel managers, consequently face a challenge that is far from one dimensional. How are their categories impacted in distinct ways by the combination of e-commerce and price trends?

That’s the question addressed in the consumer goods outlook to 2025 published by MacroSavvy™. The outlook breaks down and forecasts the e-commerce and economic impacts by 13 major categories that make up consumer goods.